Vanity Fair Briefs New Brooklynite Martin Amis on What's 'Hip'

As The Observer reported last December, British novelist Martin Amis is packing up, crossing the pond, and shacking up in Cobble Hill. But how will the author of Money, son of Kingsley and drinking pal of Hitch find out about all those hip hot spots surrounding his new digs?

Always servicey, Vantiy Fair will keep Amis from being out of the loop. The magazine’s esteemed James Wolcott claims to have received an out-of-the blue email from Amis asking what the kids are getting off to these days. Wolcott’s worried that he’s not the ideal advice-giver — “I live on the Upper West Side, after all, where buffalo roam free and poetry slams are never to be heard” — but he proceeds anyway.

Turns out Wolcott knows himself pretty well! The place he described doesn’t sound like Brooklyn, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world.

And I feel confident he will find much to do in Brooklyn that will help take his mind off annihilation now and then. He once wrote a quite vivid article about visiting a hardcore porn set in California; perhaps he will likewise take voyeuristic dip into the moiling inertia of Brooklyn’s mumblecore scene, where even less happens on the set, allowing him more head-space to reflect on art, fleeting youth, transient flesh, and what-not. Or check out one of those exciting “indie” bands that really know how to shake that tambourine.

Tongue gets lodged in cheek later, though, when Wolcott regales with anecdotes of Amis singing German lieder in a “divine” purple silk robe, commenting that his voice sounds like Marianne Faithfull.

But all kidding aside, maybe Amis should write about mumblecore. Who doesn’t love “moiling inertia” every once in a while?